Horst Fassel:    Perspectives on Migrations in Literature. Banat

The study compares two authors from Banat, who leaves the country in the '80. First, Richard Wagner (born 1952), left the country in 1987. He is a German language author and he explained his departure with an unshakeable political adversity against dictatorship Ceauşescu (Wagner usual affirm he is different than swabians from Banat, who went to Germany for family reunification). The second Romanian author, Cătălin Darian Florescu, after his confession, passed clandestine the border to Yugoslavia and was established in 1982 in Switzerland, where he passed degree in psychology, then working as a psychologist/psychopathologist by the year 2002, when his literary successes have allowed him to devote exclusively to writing in German.

From the creation of Richard Wagner (more than a dozen of books, much published in Romania) I pursuing stories like "Request for departure" (1988), "Money Good Reception" (1989) and "Torrent of Stones in Vienna" (1990). This three works constitute as a single whole, motivating the desire for departure from communist Romania, then the received in Germany and the evolution of immigrant in the first stage in West Berlin. Stories are written in light of the narrator Stirner (Stirne = forehead), which seems a perfect copy of Richard Wagner. Through the character-narrator, oscillate between fiction and biographical reality, Wagner seeks to print much credibility to this events. In snapshots, almost suggestive, is running reality of seventy-eighty years in Romania, especially in Timişoara. Stirner is a journalist and he is targeted this social framework. However, he denounces the former editorial colleagues, he think about himself he is infallible, the only brave, who says things named (what he says, about his conception of art, about what he wrote when he’s not running on editorial duties or he is not into a restaurant, we don’t find out nothing). It may be noted that the character-narrator claims something which does not exist in real biography of Wagner (for instance: that does not receive a visa to go abroad; but in 1985 Wagner was 6 weeks in Germany and was interviewed by Emmerich Reichrath about this journey in newspaper „Neuer Weg"; in the spring of 1987 Wagner departed in Germany with Herta Müller, his wife, so they waited for permission to quit the country just over a year!). Inaccuracies concerns to the contacts of personnel from Securitate also: Stirner is visited by an officer in uniform, which leads him with the car to the seat of Securitate, less plausible, known as the officers from Securitate don’t walked in uniform into town). The character Stirner, Wagner's projection is a maladjusted, both in Romania and Germany. His surprising responsiveness is reflected in the comments about languages. He claims that he does not support the Romanian language, because this language has been invaded by the slogans (what would be said if he comes from the D.D.R.?). He didn’t learn about Cyrillic writing because he did not support the Russians. The credibility of narration is diminishing by these inconsistencies, and the book "The application of departure" excel with invective against fellow who support Richard Wagner. In the last of the three books the maladjusted, disguised as the character of Benda, presents the German and Austrian society in sombre colours. The theme is about separation between the narrator and his girlfriend, reflecting the divorce of Richard Wagner and Herta Müller.

Another issue than resignation and despair does not seem subjective, in this case possible.

Cătălin Dorian Florescu (born 1967) conceives - from retrospective of the decade - an ample periplus of Romanian realities, both before and after 1989. For Romanian present, Florescu show a grown interest. In his the second novel "Blind Masseur" (2001), the narrator Teodor Moldovan, left with his parents in Switzerland, returning home on regions Arad and Moneasa. There he meet open dialogue people, undermined by a daily full of contradictions. The Masseur, a real blind, trying to spread his culture in the immediate vicinity: his patients (and almost all are patients in a hospital or in its immediate neighbourhood) must recite them on CDs books of great resonance in Romanian and universal literature. So, he creates a heard library, and all of Moneasa have, at once, literary concerns. How fails, both The Masseur and the young Romanian returned home, passing from one disappointment to another, it paints much talent in the epic construction. Less successful is the description of the years before 1989, when the young man finds love of his youth, but leaves it across the border to Yugoslavia and then to Austria. Parents are lost in Switzerland, and the young man, who seek youth and lost love, returning in plenty Western and founding in this new contradictions and deceptions, a place, even without the recovery of lost love.

We find the same pleading for a return to the country, in Florescu’s last novel, "Zaira".

In the first part, we see the youth of Zaira on parental manor near Strehaia, in a second, her career as a theater artist at the dolls in Timişoara, where she lives disappointment in her amorous relationships: with a homosexual minister, with a puppetteer and with a childhood friend. With her daughter and the third husband, Zaira passes in 1968 the border between Czechoslovakia and Austria settling in the United States. There she became a mandatory of an obscure restaurant, earns good, but goes bankrupt and is back in Timişoara where a former servant of her parents, now a Securitate officer, reveals that all its failings (confiscation parenthood, alcoholism puppeteer loved, intrigue with the minister, the relationship intrigue between her husband and daughter in the U.S. etc.) were set up by him. Revenge of the servant would reveal the secret of this novel, which is so a detective story too. But the happy end change perspective: Zaira returned to her Tudor, the puppeteer and all subjective dramas seem to be forgotten. Florescu is also in this novel an endowed narrator, but the thread of action, the complexity of epic speech, become sometimes obsessive and contradictory. Life seems to be like an incredible adventure movie (even if it appears that the author departs from a real case). The theme would be offered the opportunity to begin a comprehensive picture of the history of Romanian society in the years before the Second World War and the communist period. But being periods that do not Florescu-lived live, he makes it a lot or a pass easily over some important happenings. Political or social events are not presented too convincing, for example, Czech resistance to the invaders in 1968, and more: communist László Goldmann, former lover of Zaira’s mother, remain in office until 1989, so decades in a row, and the homosexual minister also (although one knows how fast it have the chance dignitaries during the communist) and other detail, when Zaira spoke harshly with the first secretary of Timişoara not bear any consequences, etc. As in the case of Wagner, inaccuracies reduce the narrative potential of Florescu too. But Florescu's interest for the current Romanian society allows, however, more and more convincing presentation than the life of Wagner. At Florescu clichés abound especially in scenes of Western world, although the author should know quite well the west.

Injury leaving home places is different consequences to those two writers. Florescu's views seem more plausible, while Wagner is trying to overcome using the models of Western narrative (resumes, especially narrative media of Peter Handke), and his first West Germany phase, when he oscillated between Banat and West Berlin memories, reveal, first, total uproot tragedy, where he like to refer to his militant politics. Florescu searches his vocation in today Romanian society, rediscovering with all its contradictions.